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My recent collaborations have been with the National Symphony Orchestra, The North Carolina Symphony, and the Kennedy Center Chamber Players, and have included orchestral works (Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, Poetry of the Piedmont, and Cut Time) as well as chamber music (String Quartet No. 2 ("Sylvan and Aeolian Figures"). Fortunately, I am also able to pursue recording of my music, and to collaborate with other musicians on recording projects. This is ongoing, in particular with the third volume of recordings for Bridge, Inc. and recent release of Elation on Albany in 2014, including Four Pieces Quasi Sonata for viola and piano. These recordings have involved collaboration with my Duke colleagues, the 21st Century Consort (an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution), the North Carolina Symphony, and and the Odense Symphony Orchestra of Denmark. I see my life as a composer involving creation; collaboration, and advocacy for the art of music (including education, curation, and engagement with musical institutions).

Stephen Jaffe, Volume III. Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, Poetry of the Piedmont, Homage to the Breath, and Cut Time, vol. 3 no. 9255 (2008), Bridge Records. First Recordings, Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, Poetry of the Piedmont, Homage to the Breath

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A duet inspired by and choreographed to "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra," 2nd Movement, by Duke faculty composer Stephen Jaffe. Performed with the first movement of the same work, choreographed in 2003.

A duet inspired by and choreographed to "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra," 2nd Movement, by Duke faculty composer Stephen Jaffe. Performed with the first movement of the same work, choreographed in 2003.

I. Prelude (fragments)
II. Scherzo I: poised and graceful, but impish (“scherzino”)
III. Joy of rhythm
IV. Ribbons (watercolor)
V. Scherzo II (“scherzone”- with night blues)
VI. Postlude (with light of dove and the rose)
STRING QUARTET No. 3 (“A Tapestry”) is a gathering of musical fragments woven into a whole. Framed by a Prelude and Postlude, the longest of the six movements lasts about five minutes, the shortest, one minute or so. Musical ideas and phrases migrate across the movements, in the service of the moment and the whole experience.

The six movements of A Tapestry are Prelude (Fragments)—Scherzo I (“Scherzino”, or Little scherzo)—Joy of Rhythm—Ribbons (watercolor)—Scherzo II (“Scherzone” or Big scherzo-with Night Blues)—Postlude (with light of dove and the rose). The descriptive titles of each movement require little explanation, except two. Within the otherwise wild and shifting energy of Scherzo II comes Night Blues, inspired as a memory-portrait of a performance given by the Ciompi Quartet and cellist Norman Fischer on September 14, 2001. The whole world seemed to depend on one note’s timing! The Postlude’s main section also bears a subtitle. This part of the music is a free transcription for quartet of a song I composed to Richard Wilbur’s translation from the French of Villiers de l’Isle Adam, which includes the lines “If, like the flower which grows/ In the exile soil of graves/ You beg to share my woes…I’ll bring you a gift of doves.”

With Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, mezzo-soprano and Daniel Thomas Davis, piano, in a presentation of music by faculty (Davis and Jaffe), and members of the Music 295 Seminar "The Composer As Artist in the Public Arena: Working with Text as Sound, Narrative."

STILL LIFE WITH BLUE (for Orchestra) aka: SOUTHERN LIGHTS Durham Symphony Orchestra, WiIliam Henry Currry, Cond.
A separate version of the work, THREE PIECES from STILL LIFE WITH BLUE, was created for children. KidZNotes and the Durham Symphony Orchestra performed the work side by side in April 2012 in a free public concert at the Emily Kryzewski Center in Durham.

The thirteen movements comprising Summer Voices alternate between instrumental and choral ones. Following the short Fragmentary Prelude, and beginning with No. 2, the sequence follows clearly between movements deriving from a vocalise in march-like tempo (call it “Alla Marcia”), and a separate narrative using Richard Wilbur’s quiet, intense, poems. The instrumental music is by turns fanciful, lyrical, angular. The complimentary Wilbur poems inhabit a different space, and are set for the chorus and mezzo-soprano with a sense of quiet; miniature still-lifes drawn from nature. Heard in alternation, the two intercut narratives of Summer Voices are never really joined, but have something to say to each other, as a conversation between nature and art may absorb us on a summer evening. The march-like material comes to a culmination in the twelfth movement, prior to the concluding Wilbur section, “The Gifts”, actually the poet’s English translation of a poem by the 19th century French poet Villiers de l’Isle Adam. The gifts are an Ancient ballad, a dew-filled rose, and doves.

Thanks is given the Monadnock Music Festival, where in 2009 an earlier version of “Who Cooks for You?” was presented, with Mr. Wilbur in attendance to read his poem prior to the performance.

Stephen Jaffe, Cameo (2011). Da Capo Chamber Players, Merkin Hall NY. The work, for two antiphonal cellists and ensemble, was conceived as a passing of the torch from longtime Da Capo cellist Andre Emelianoff to James Wilson, the group's new cellist. Jaf

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For Flute, Violin, Viola, and Cello. First performed in Francestown, New Hampshire and in Durham (Ciompi Quartet, Summer Concerts), July 2015. The 10 minute work is a new arrangement of two of pieces from Three Figures and A Ground (1988).

With Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, mezzo-soprano and Daniel Thomas Davis, piano, in a presentation of music by faculty (Davis and Jaffe), and members of the Music 295 Seminar "The Composer As Artist in the Public Arena: Working with Text as Sound, Narrative."